Welcome to the Physics Web Service.

This document is aimed at newcomers and gives a basic overview of the web services that we

provide in the department.

Our website address is: http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/

Questions or support can be sent to physicsweb@physics.ox.ac.uk

Logging in on to the main webserver

The login link is located in the blue footer at the bottom of webpages.

If you click on this, you should then be prompted for your login details:

There are two alternate forms of login accepted. The first is your Physics account (more details on

this towards the end of this document), and the second is your single-sign-on (SSO) Webauth

account (more details about this can be found at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/webauth/). If you login

with your Physics account, click the grey “Log in” button, if you use SSO/Webauth click the grey

“Webauth” button. When you have successfully logged in, a light blue bar under the header banner

should appear:

Editor Help

As you can see from the example above there is a “Help” link over on the left. This is aimed at

website editors, so please take some time to look around this section if you are planning to add any

content to the site. It covers some of the basic information on:

- Blocks (which are the content boxes found on the right-hand side of some pages.

- Case Studies (these are used under the “Enterprise” section)

- Content Guidelines (this section should be read by all!)

- Copyright (again everyone should read this)

- Editing Content (this explains how the editing content pane works, it is in much the same

way as a BB Forum)

- Forms and Questionnaires (it is possible to set up some basic forms and questionnaires using

the system)

- Image galleries

(eg. http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/industry/media-services-unit/image-gallery)

- Images (some advice about using images in your pages)

- Keyboard shortcuts (when editing)

- News and Events (for creating new content – will reduplicate in this document)

- Profiles (for your personal profile section – will reduplicate and expand in this document)

- Sections (information about “My Sections”)

There is also a video taken from the first master-class we held on the new pages given by Chris

Causer: http://vimeo.com/27815832 (this video covers old version, some of the information may be not valid

for upgraded version of current website) .

Reviewing your Profile

Department members are able to update their own personal profile using the site.

The fastest way to view your profile is to click your name and select View profile link in the top right of

the website (see image above.) This should bring up your profile view. Here you can review:

- your job title

- set the permissions on your photo (or upload a new one)

- see what publications you are associated with (these are handled by the Symplectic system,

so please see the section later on how to administer these)

- review your contact details (which can be corrected using the Personal Information webform

at: https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/administration/login/ - changes might take a few hours to

propagate).

- You can add more information about yourself using tabs.

Please note: any changes to the Profile privacy takes 15 minutes to be updated and Profiles are

published immediately. Private files are not supported on user profile page. You can begin editing these

details by clicking “Edit”:

Editing your profile

As you can see in the example above it’s mostly just a case of updating information on the web form.

You can also see in the picture the first tab section “Tab 1” which can be edited. By default the Tab

titles are: About us, Teaching, Research and Consultancy but you can rename these to whatever you

require. There are only four tabs, but you do not need to use them all, if there are any tags with an

empty body these do not get displayed – even if they have titles. However if your find that four tabs

is not enough for you, options to consider might to either upload a file attachment document (eg. a

PDF with more information), or to use collapse tags.

Basic Editing:

The editing uses BBForum style tags for as it’s mark-up. HTML can also be used, although it is filtered

so that the style will hopefully remain in keeping with the rest of the site. There is an overview on

editing at: http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/help-for-editors/editing-content

Using Collapse Tags

Collapse tags are used to hide large chunks of information or complexity on a page, thus reducing

page length and making it easier to read. They are particularly well suited to FAQs (Frequently asked

questions). The tags can be added to content bodies.

The collapsible sections are separated by titles which use “header 2”:

These titles are then embedded by using the collapse button:

An example of the tagged body code might look something like the following example:

The end result when previewed should look like this (I’ve expanded the second item to

show how these work):

Publishing content

The system uses workflow, so changes are initially stored in a draft copy (user profile page does not support this).To store your draft changes you first need to save them by clicking the “Save” button at the end of the page.

If you see a yellow box like the one below, then content is in draft format still so you then to publish these

changes if you are to send them live. To do this you need to click on the “publish changes” link

You may notice under the “Edit” tab, there is something like the following three sections that can be

administered:

Let’s go over what this cover if you click on them:

Profile Privacy

You can define in general terms how much of your profile you would like to be shown to the outside

world. If you click the "Profile Privacy" tab – you should see something like the box below:

Any changes to your privacy levels will take up to 15 minutes to come into effect and it should be

self explanatory what you are setting the privacy levels for. Here are the definitions of privacy levels:

- Public (this is visible by anyone including outside users)

- University of Oxford only (This is visible by anyone who has logged in, including webauth

authentication, and anyone who is accessing the website from a computer within the

university firewall)

- Nobody (visible by nobody)

As always, remember that you need to save this page and that changes may take a short period

before they propagate.

Group Membership

Researchers will want to click on this tab and associate themselves with research groups. If you click

on this option, it should bring up a list (see example below):

It is then a matter of going down through the list and ticking any of your relevant research groups.

Remember to save. These changes happen instantly. If you ticked lets say ATLAS, if you then

navigated to the ATLAS research group you will see that you should now appear somewhere in the

People list on the right-hand side of that group. You may need to use the up/down arrows to find

yourself within the group list:

Updating your publications list

Your publications list is not directly controlled by the website. The list of publications for your profile

is held in a central University of Oxford database called Symplectic. If you do not have a Symplectic

account, or are not sure whether you do or not, please email physicsweb@physics.ox.ac.uk,

including your full name and your Physics username.

To log in to Symplectic, you need to go to the University of Oxford Symplectic website and log in

using your SSO username and password:

https://oxris.ox.ac.uk/

Using Symplectic

Symplectic itself contains comprehensive help. To get to this, simply click on 'help' in the top blue

bar when you are logged into Symplectic, and you will find both a Quick Start guide and a

comprehensive guide to all the facilities within Symplectic. If you have any questions not answered

there, please do email physicsweb@physics.ox.ac.uk for assistance. Please note that it may take up

to 24 hours for any changes you make in Symplectic to be reflected on the Physics website.

Order of publications

The order of publications on the Physics website is the same as you choose for display within

Symplectic, so, if you would like to change the order on the Physics website, you will need to log in

to Symplectic, click on 'Publications', then click on the appropriate ordering - which is usually “Sort

all publications by reporting date (newest to oldest)”. It may take up to 24 hours for this change to

appear on the Physics website.

Creating a news item or an event

Physics departmental members should have the ability to do either when logged in.

Creating a news item

i) Go to "My Sections" or the "Create Content" depending on what you have been

assigned in the light blue bar under the header.

ii) Click "News Story"

iii) Enter a title

iv) Select a section for the news item. Please note that you can select multiple sections by

holding Ctrl and clicking on additional sections.

v) Enter the body text of your news item.

vi) If you want the news item to appear on the front page www2.physics.ox.ac.uk then you

will need to tick the “Request publication on the homepage” box under the main body

text area.

vii) If you want your news item to get noticed, you should also attach an image (please

make sure it adheres to copyright regulations):

- Click "Choose file" under "Upload image"

- Select an image and click "Open"

- Click "Attach"

- Click "Save"

viii) You can also add file attachments (eg. PDF documents) to the article. These need to be

added by expanding the “File attachments” section. You then need to click the

“Browse...” button, select your location/file and click “Attach”. You can then can then

rename the filename description box so that the link will be something more meanful

(eg. ATLAS Press Release on 11/11/2011).

Please note that all news is moderated .

Creating an event

This is in much the same vein as creating a news item, but it also has some additional information to

fill out:

i) Go to "My Sections" or the "Create Content" depending on what you have been

assigned in the light blue bar under the header.

ii) Click "Event"

iii) Enter a title

iv) Select a section for the news item. You must do this unless you want your item to get

lost. Please note that you can select multiple sections by holding Ctrl and clicking on

additional sections.

v) Enter the From and To Date/Times. These may be the same day, or they may be for a

meeting which takes place over a number of days. The date should be in dd mmm yyyy

format – eg. 29 Sep 2011 and the time should be in the 24 hour clock method – eg 2pm

would be 14:00

vi) You can set the Venue (if this is relevant), if not you can leave this to –none-

vii) You can set the Room (where applicable)

viii) You can set the audience type this is relevant for in the drop-down list (eg. Primary

School, Secondary School, Family and Friends, General public (age 14+) etc.

ix) Enter the description/body text of your event.

x) Enter your contact(s) information for the event

xi) You can link to an external web URL using the “More information” box.

xii) If you want the news item to appear on the front page www2.physics.ox.ac.uk then you

will need to tick the “Request publication on the homepage” box under the main body

text area.

xiii) If you want to attach an image to your news item you need to:

- Click "Choose file" under "Upload image"

- Select an image and click "Open"

- Click "Attach"

- Click "Save"

xiv) You can also add file attachments (eg. PDF documents) to the article. These need to be

added by expanding the “File attachments” section. You then need to click the

“Browse...” button, select your location/file and click “Attach”. You can then can then

rename the filename description box so that the link will be something more meanful

(eg. Poster for the Open Day on 11/11/2011).

Please note that all events are moderated

Physics Webservers

There are several different webservers across the department, but the two most commonly known

ones are www.physics.ox.ac.uk (Windows/IIS based and predominately runs some of web/database

applications) and www2.physics.ox.ac.uk (runs Apache on Ubuntu/Linux and runs our main website,

which is created using Drupal). You will probably notice that many things will bounce between

www.physics and www2.physics throughout the site. Here are some differences between the two:

www.physics.ox.ac.uk

This webserver runs many of our internal applications including:

- Request to Order (RTO) https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/rto

- Some of our IT applications (eg. Account management such as Email forwarding, registering

laptops, viewing your quarantined emails) http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/IT/

- Your personal details webform https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/administration/login/

- The Physics lecture list timetables http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/lectures/

- The Building Services request system https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/buildingservices/

It also (currently) houses much other information such as Health and Safety

(https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/healthsafety/) and some User Areas

(http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/users/)

Authentication for www.physics.ox.ac.uk

Unlike the main webserver, www.physics.ox.ac.uk will prompt with a pop-up login box when

restricted content is requested – eg.

The username generally takes the form of PHYSICS\<Windows login name> with associated

password – eg.

PHYSICS\carslaw

(please note it requires a backslash rather than a forward slash). Undergraduates have a slightly

different form which is PHYSICSTEACHING\<college abbr.><random 4 digit code>

- the password is their teaching course account

PHYSICSTEACHING\kebl1234

Any information about your teaching course password should be sent to support@physics.ox.ac.uk

This webserver does not accept Webauth/Single-sign-on creditials unlike www2.

www2.physics.ox.ac.uk

This is now our main website which uses the Drupal CMS (Content Management System) for

authoring content. This means that content can be edited in an Internet browser rather than using

external packages such as Dreamweaver, Expression Web or SharePoint Designer. It houses many of

our externally facing pages, which now also includes many of the research pages, and will be

superseding much of the content which was previously found on www.physics.ox.ac.uk.

Authentication for www2.physics.ox.ac.uk

The login process is explained on the first two pages of this document. If you are an undergraduate

you should use your Webauth details. If you are a member of the department then you can use

either your Physics account details or your Webauth details or your. The Physics account works in

much the same way as logging into www.physics.ox.ac.uk, only you drop the PHYSICS\ part – eg.

<Windows login name> with password – eg.

PHYSICS\carslaw now becomes just carslaw

Accessing your email over the web

Department members can access their email by going to the following address:

https://mail.physics.ox.ac.uk/owa

To access this you will need to use your Physics account details – eg.

PHYSICS\carslaw

(with associated password). It is worth noting that by default the security option is set to “public or

shared computer”. This option automatically logs you off after a set period of inactivity (you can click

on the “show explanation” link for further details.